The association between caesarean section and childhood obesity revisited: a cohort study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The mode of delivery has recently gained attention as another potential perinatal risk factor for childhood obesity but results are conflicting. OBJECTIVE: To examine whether caesarean section is independently associated with childhood obesity after adjusting for a broad range of confounding factors. METHODS: The current study used a population-based survey in Grade 5 students linked to a provincial perinatal registry in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Associations between caesarean section and childhood overweight and obesity at age 10/11 years were examined using multiple logistic regression. RESULTS: Of the 4298 students who participated in the 2003 Children's Lifestyle and School Performance Study (response rate 51.1%), 3426 (80%) could be linked with information in the Atlee Perinatal Database, and 2988 mother-child pairs (70%) had complete information on the exposure and outcome. Compared to vaginal delivery, caesarean section was associated with offspring obesity (OR) 1.49, 95% CI 1.10 to 2.00) in the univariate analysis. After adding maternal prepregnancy weight to the multiple regression model, the OR for obesity dropped from 1.48 to 1.20 (95% CI 0.87 to 1.65). When caesarean section with and without labour were considered separately, we found no statistically significant associations relative to the vaginal delivery group (OR 1.24, 95% CI 0.84 to 1.82 and OR 1.03, 95% CI 0.58 to 1.84). CONCLUSION: Our results do not support a causal association between caesarean section and childhood obesity. Maternal prepregnancy weight was an important confounder in the association between caesarean delivery and childhood obesity and needs to be considered in future studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".